Flavor of The Month
by IdleShadows
Summary: *M rating does not entirely reflect story content, but rather set as such to allow me full artistic license* *I do not own RWBY, and do not claim ownership of any characters described within* Hi everyone! This is my first time submitting here, and also my first organized fanfiction! This one's going to (attempt to) be a Neo redemption arc. Have fun!
1. Chapter 1: Just Beginning

**Chapter 1: Just Beginning**

The sharp din of dress-shoes pacing in circles along the concrete backstage was enough to set off even the gentlest of Faunus. Ear after ear pricked up in annoyance among every group of man-beasts as they passed the ecstatic redhead, clad in his staple bowler hat and suit.

"Tonight's the night Neo! This is the moment I finally win over these filthy mutts!"

He made sure to mouth the last few words to his female companion, sitting cross-legged on the crate at his side. Roman Torchwick may be an arrogant, hotheaded racist, but he's not dumb. He knew the danger of expressing his…views around a couple hundred White Fang revolutionaries.

His pacing came to a gliding halt in front of the classy bodyguard, emerald eyes shifting down to meet hers.

"Sorry to make you look up from your scroll, princess." He spat every consonant with an unsubtle rage, "You're good for nothing but fighting, you know that? I can't even get a few words of praise out of that pretty mouth of yours."

The hot venom of his words made a home on the lit cigar he pushed between his lips. Gloved hands meeting silver curtains at the other end of the storage room, and out he went onto the warehouse floor turned makeshift stage. He stopped short to marvel at his ace in the hole, a glorious hunk of steel he had recently ordered Neo to "borrow" from an Atlas-bound cargo train.

He lifted his gloved fingers from the mech and, as he strode past Faunus soldiers, Grimm masks and robes abound, uttered a soft "Show time", finding his place in the eyes of the crowd.

Neo could hear the clamor of booing as soon as the curtains embraced each other. She was seething. In all her years of "working" for him, she'd never once been paid and yet, here she was, putting up with him like some kind of babysitter.

"I'd better head out there with him," she thought, "he could get himself killed."

She entertained that idea for a little bit, smiling ear-to-ear at the image of the ginger being torn apart by the very Faunus he was trying to gain the favor of.

She tucked her scroll away to a small pocket inside her corset, laced up her ivory boots, and strode in the footsteps of her employer, taking a place far to his side. Shuffling between the claws and tails of the white-robed figures all about, her mismatched eyes scanned the host of beasts below.

Roman began the speech Neo knew all too well. The last couple of days, as they hid out in hotel after hotel around Vale, she'd heard it repeated over and over again to her, and faced his anger as she refused to even smirk in reaction. That was just her way.

But now, as he recited it to the horde before them, she saw the weight his words carried in their eyes and their shouts.

"Now, I'll be the first to admit, humans are the worst. Case in point. So, I understand why you'd love to see us locked away or, better yet…"

"Killed."

And with that, the pack at their feet went into a frenzy. All save two lone Faunus. A monkey and cat, shuttering in place and eyeing each other like common prey, searching for a means of escape from the predator.

Neo could tell they were looking at the breaker box at the back of the stage. Roman could too, apparently, as after his speech drew to a close and he had unveiled the Atlesian Paladin behind the curtain, he ordered several White Fang guards to, reluctantly, apprehend the pair.

She couldn't quite tell what she saw in those two, but she knew one thing for certain; this was her chance. Neo heard, among the chaos, a soft voice scream "Sun, the window!" and with that, she drew her sword from its umbrella sheath and, with one quick slash, cut the power to the entire building.

"Have fun seeing in the dark, asshole."

Roman hadn't seen her slice the breaker. In fact, he wasn't seeing much of anything over the thick cover of darkness when he ordered her to follow him, entering the paladin and illuminating the warehouse with the red glow of its lights.

She winced as Roman slammed through the warehouse wall in chase.

"Damn."

And off she pranced behind him, grinning like a child at what would come next.


	2. Chapter 2: Make Way for Tomorrow

**Chapter 2: Make Way for Tomorrow**

Far off in the distance, Neo could hear the faint scream of the blonde-haired monkey Faunus from earlier. A screeching "HELP!" accentuated mostly by the droning of horns as car after car flipped in Roman's wake.

The Paladin he was piloting haphazardly skated along the highways in chase, tossing everything and everyone in its path high up into the moonlit sky.

Neo dashed between each projectile, trying in vain to help passengers from the wreckages with her umbrella, extending its steel tip into the door frames, carving out openings for escape. But for each one who crawled from the metallic jaws, two more lay unbreathing in pools of velvet.

She had seen Roman at his worst. Long ago she made a pact with herself to never give him the pleasure of hearing her voice for as long as she was in his "company". She had drawn out every ounce of his ire, suffered blow after blow, and still she had never seen him this way.

A complete disregard for life in the pursuit of power.

This side of him reminded her of an old friend. A pair of twin tears fell gracefully from her chocolate eye as she pulled a balding man from his carriage, spitting a toothless "Thank you" and praying at her feet.

Under streetlights ahead she saw the pair from earlier in the warehouse, trying desperately to stop the mechanical beast. Two more soon joined their ranks, a slender blue-haired boy, and a fiery blonde girl, both straddling a motorcycle adorned with flaming decals.

"What a badass!" Neo whispered aloud, almost ashamed at herself for speaking. She hurried atop the wreckages to join the fight, just as the blue-haired boy leapt with his weapon in-hand off the steel mare, spearing the Paladin through the shoulder. Behind him, at the front of a semi-truck, stood the monkey Faunus.

He was…meditating. As cars flew past his body, barely missing him, he stood in a mode of unfaltering prayer, as two ethereal copies of himself appeared behind him, both rushing to the aid of his friend.

With the doppelgangers evaporating as Roman's fists pounded through them, the monkey flung himself onto the mech for a blow with his staff, quickly being thrown aside along with his friend in a single swipe by the Paladin.

Neo had to act fast. She quickly activated her semblance, placing in front of Roman two crystalline images of the boys, confusing him into hitting thin air. She dove from the side railing, catching the Faunus mid-fall, and tossing the blue-hair her umbrella. He fell gracefully to the sidewalk below, missing the landing only slightly, with Neo and her newfound friend falling a little less gently to his right.

"Cool hair sister, thanks for the assist! Even though we _totally_ didn't need it, isn't that right Sun? I'm Neptune by the way!" Neptune rushed his words and slicked back his oceanic hair, thrusting his hand back out to shake Neo's and giving her back the pink and brown umbrella.

"Hey, wait. Aren't you the girl from…" Sun began to speak, but was quickly cut off by the shuffle of boots as Neo ran in the direction of an accumulating cloud of fog at a nearby underpass.

"Well, she was cute. Wanna grab some ramen?"

Sun replied with a hint of shock in his voice, "Sure, Neptune."

When Neo arrived, she noticed a couple of familiar faces. The blonde from the highway was here, sans badass motorcycle, and the brunette cat Faunus from the warehouse, now decorated with a thin veneer of ribbon to conceal her ears.

"Odd."

Two even newer additions joined their ranks in the thick mist, however. A petite redhead, but not Roman's kind of redhead. This girl had hair and an outfit the color of roses blooming in the summer…

…or slick pools of blood in a wrecked car. The girl carried a scythe the size of her entire body that seemed to double as a gun, and was using it to fire shot after shot at the Paladin.

At the redhead's side was a dainty, almost princess-like figure. Clad in white and wielding in an offensive position a rapier. She appeared to be summoning a kind of rune in front of the sniper-scythe's barrel.

The conjunction of these attacks began to freeze over the remaining limbs of the mech. Neo felt a little disappointed she had missed the removal of the arms, but washed that thought away quickly as she remembered the lives she had just saved.

Making sure to position herself behind Roman's line of sight, Neo began to conjure illusions of each of the girls, one by one, in front of the mech. With his legs weighed down by the ice, it became harder and harder for Roman to pilot the beast, eventually crashing down on its side while attempting to kick a mirage of the blonde.

Off to the left, the Faunus and blonde were combining their weapons to ready a final blow. The brunette's whip-like blades hurling the blonde, with her mechanized gloves primed for a punch, right into the pilot seat of the paladin, shattering it into scrap.

Neo hid behind a pillar of the roadway as Roman leapt from the mech's interior.

"Where is that bitch! I told her to follow me. I would be in a much better position right now, if she weren't so goddamn lazy!" He flailed his arms with every word, stomping off away from his four adversaries.

"Ladies, Ice Queen, always a pleasure. If you happen to see a good-looking girl with weird eyes sitting flat on her ass anywhere around here, do let me know."

And with that, Roman entered an airship that had descended onto the underpass during his monologue, spraying frost all about in its landing. With four armed-guards pointing guns from the interior, none of the girls dared take off after it.

When the dust settled and the airship was long gone, Neo began to walk away. She had been too scared to face Roman in person, and even though she had helped, something about being on the sidelines for the last bit washed her face red with guilt.

"Hey, wait!" The ruby-clad girl was waving in her direction, wide-eyed and smiling.

"You were AMAZING out there! You were all like 'woosh' and then there was two of Yang and…wow!"

"Yeah, what Ruby said! You really helped me out there, short-stack!"

Her name was Ruby. How…fitting.

Neo flushed an even deeper vermillion at the words "short-stack". Roman had always made fun of her height, but something about this Yang girl saying it sounded…nice.

"I guess I do owe you some thanks as well. I, uh, I like your dress. My name is Weiss Schnee, heiress to the Schnee…HMPH!"

Yang silenced her with a punch to the shoulder.

"What she meant to say was that it's nice to meet you!"

Ruby turned to the brunette, who was silently eyeing Neo throughout the introductions.

"Blake, your turn…"

"Nice…to meet you." And with that, she turned and walked away.

Yang was the first to speak up as the girls turned their attention back to Neo.

"What's your name?"

"I'm uh...Neopolitan." She choked out in response.

"Like the _ice cream?"_

Neo stifled a laugh, as if she'd never heard that one before.

Ruby added, "That explains the dress! And the eyes! And the umbrella! Wow, what fashion sense! Is the umbrella also a sword? WOW YOU'RE SO COOL!"

As Ruby continuously sheathed and unsheathed the sword at Neo's hip, Weiss pulled her away before addressing the multicolored girl before her.

"Would you like to accompany us back to Beacon? We can take you to see Ozpin and maybe…"

Ozpin? Neo had heard that name before. Many times, actually. None of them in a welcoming light. The same tears from earlier began to resurface, this time in the other, strawberry eye.

"NO!"

This was the first time Neo had spoken up like that in close to two years. The three girls before her looked on with awe, as a shaking hand moved up to cover her mouth. Away she ran in silent tears, umbrella catching on the wind behind her.

Weiss looked on confused, like she had uttered some horrible curse Neo's way, and the three walked anxiously back the way Blake had gone.

As Neo sat staring blankly at the shattered moon above, feet dangling along the guard-rail she had just recently dove from, she couldn't help but feel as if she'd made a horrible mistake. On the main street below, Sun and Neptune sat at a ramen shop, both silently slurping their hearty meals.

Neo wiped away her tears, descended elegantly, and walked their way.

"Maybe it's not too late."


	3. Chapter 3: First Impressions

**Chapter 3: First Impressions**

Sun and Neptune sat hunched over their bowls under the flickering lights of the ramen stand. It was mostly silent, save for the occasional sizzle of cooking noodles and the slurp the boys made with each bite.

"I wonder what happened to that girl…" the Faunus boy uttered between swallows at his friend beside him.

"She'll be back, bro! Don't worry, no lady can resist my charms." The last few words became muffled slightly, as Neptune awkwardly wiped a stray noodle from his upper lip.

About twenty feet back, under the soft shadow of the underpass, Neo stood listening, her umbrella raised to conceal her face in the moonlight. The pair at the stand both passed their empty bowls to the man behind the counter, with Sun using his tail to wave a silent goodbye

Neo tiptoed between streetlights over to the stand the boys had just left, sauntering up to sit at one of the rounded leather seats. The older man at the stove smiled at her, his squinted eyes pulling sharp at the edges as he went back to stirring his noodles.

"The two… who were here before. Do you know much about them?" She choked the words out into the steam, slowly finding her voice once again.

"They're my new regulars, sweetie. Been coming here every day now for about a week. Heavy eaters for a couple of Mistrali kids, but it is the Vytal festival, after all." The cook turned from his pot and gave the same taut smile as before, being taken aback by the pile of lien occupying the spot where the small girl had been seated. Her pinkish silhouette tracing the streets ahead of the shop.

As she raced closer and closer to the striding pair, her boots crashed over the concrete like a storm until a stray pebble found its way beneath her feet, sending her sprawling onto the ground. The grinding screech of leather on stone sent the boys' heads flying around to greet her, both smiling at the hilarity of the scene before them.

"Hey there, pretty lady. Come here often?" Neptune said, leaning his elbow against the wall of the alley.

Sun glared at him, then looked back at Neo. "I saw you trailing us by the way, your clothes don't really make you all that sneaky. Try dressing like Blake if you want to follow two dudes around at night!" He smiled again, this time noticeably closing his eyes to form it, before helping Neo up from the ground.

"I guess we don't really need to introduce ourselves, but you at least owe us that Miss 'save somebody's life and not stick around to be thanked'."

"Long title, don't you think?" Neptune half-whispered half-giggled, earning another glare from the monkey-boy.

"So, what _is_ your name, anyway?"

"I'm…uh, Neopolitan." She coughed a bit from the shock of saying her own name again. Usually it was heard from behind the harsh mouth of a scowling ginger, but now it somehow sounded soft and innocent.

For a few seconds the boys pondered this oddity of a girl. It was Neptune who broke the silence.

"No last name, huh? I dig it. Kind of long, though. How about a nickname, like Neo?"

She nodded to the boy, not caring to tell him she already went by that. He seemed the type to consider it his own idea no matter what she said, anyway.

"I'm sorry I didn't stick around after I helped the two of you, it seemed like your…uh, friends needed me too."

Sun and Neptune looked at one another confusedly, seemingly having forgotten the girls and the metallic beast they had been fighting in their ramen-fueled stupor.

"Was Blake there? Is she okay?"

"What about Weiss? Ice queen, I mean."

Both boys began to look incredibly worried, in stark contrast to their shining bravado only moments earlier. Sun seemed to have a moment of realization, and suddenly his eyes cast a cutting stare in Neo's direction.

"You were at the warehouse, with that lunatic in the mech! Blake and I saw you! How could you help someone like that?" A saddened anger overcame the Faunus, and the red in his cheeks died down only slightly as he clenched his fists and curled his blonde tail, clearly thinking only of the dark-haired girl by his side earlier in the night.

"Hey, Sun. It's okay. She saved us, remember?"

Tears began to file down Neo's cheeks. She'd never liked change, and too many times tonight had she cried as if she were a child again, sad and alone and scared of the world around her. Afraid to speak up for the things she cared about. She had already let Blake walk away tonight, and many others before, simply from her own inaction.

"Stop trying to save the world with your tongue, honey. You're better with a sword anyway. You'll just get yourself killed. And we wouldn't want that, now would we?"

This was a bad memory, but not one of Roman, surprisingly. A voice Neo had close to forgotten, blazed eternally into the back of her mind. Feminine yet commanding, with the slow burn of an ember left to smolder.

The boy continued to yell with ferocity in Neo's face, but she did not cry this time. She stood up, as tall as her stature could allow, and looked him in the eyes that were no longer his. To Neo, they were now burning swirls of hellish flame, licking the edges of an elegant figure. Ashes of a memory transposed onto the howling Faunus in her way.

"Cinder!" And with that, she reeled back…

Within seconds, Sun was crouched on the ground, cradling his bloodied face in his palms. Neptune rushed to his injured friend, spear collapsing to form a rifle and pointing it directly at Neo, who shuffled slowly to the boys' side.

"You…hit him! And while he was angry, too! I can't say I trust you, sister, even though you did give us a hand earlier. My buddy here just so happens to also be my team leader, and I don't necessarily take kindly to girls, however cute, punching him in the face."

"That…took some balls, Neo. I respect it." Sun looked up at her, spitting a sharp tooth and a bloody glob out onto the asphalt, seemingly calm from the shock.

"Now, can we please talk about what happened at that warehouse? It's really important to me."

His eyes reflected the same look from before, the one that shown only love for Blake and nothing else in the world.

"I…saw you two in the crowd. You looked uncomfortable. Like you were searching for something. I was too. I had been trying to get away from that man, the one piloting the paladin we fought. His name is Roman. Roman Torchwick."

Sun nodded in understanding. "Blake mentioned him. Her team leader had a bit of a run in with the guy. So, when the power went out you decided to slip away and help us?"

"Exactly. I'm actually…well, I'm the one who cut the power, I slashed the breaker box when you and Blake yelled for each other. I wanted to help. You two didn't seem like the others there."

The Faunus looked down at his feet, almost as if in longing. "Yeah, she's definitely not like the others. That's why I'm trying so hard to help her."

"Well, looks like you guys both have a nasty habit of helping people out of stupid situations. That's gotta count for something!" Neptune smiled at himself as he finished his sentence, closing his eyes and leaning back against the wall.

Ignoring him, Neo went on. "After your friends and I took out Roman's paladin, Blake walked away from me. She seemed about as angry as you a moment ago. I want her to know I can, and will, help."

"Tell you what, Neo. Let's go see if we can talk to her. I know her hiding spots this late at night. The rest of team RWBY probably hasn't even found her yet."

The three strolled out of the alley together, the broken moon illuminating Sun's blood against the brick walls at their sides as they walked.


End file.
